MS Sovereign was one of three large cruise ships of the Sovereign class operated by Pullmantur Cruises and formerly by Royal Caribbean International. When she was completed in 1987, Sovereign of the Seas was the world's largest passenger ship. On 24 June 2020, due to economic losses caused by COVID-19 pandemic, Sovereign arrived and was beached at Aliağa, Turkey, where she was dismantled.

This is a timeline of the world's largest passenger ships based upon internal volume, initially measured by gross register tonnage and later by gross tonnage. This timeline reflects the largest extant passenger ship in the world at any given time. If a given ship was superseded by another, scrapped, or lost at sea, it is then succeeded. Some records for tonnage outlived the ships that set them - notably the SS Great Eastern, and RMS Queen Elizabeth. The term "largest passenger ship" has evolved over time to also include ships by length as supertankers built by the 1970s were over 400 metres (1,300 ft) long. In the modern era the term has gradually fallen out of use in favor of "largest cruise ship" as the industry has shifted to cruising rather than transatlantic ocean travel. While some of these modern cruise ships were later expanded, they did not regain their "largest" titles.